Tuesday, 30 May 2006

21.00 Thursday 31st May 2006Sculpture unveiling by Pablo Leon de la Barra at Karaiskaki Square followed by performance by Los Super Elegantes at the Roof Garden of Athens Imperial Karaiskaki Square, Athens, Greece

Exhibition Duration 31st May-30th June 2006

Los Super Elegantes and Pablo Leon de la Barra have been invited to present their work for the first time in Athens, Greece, in the exhibition, “Nothing Really Matters - When You Wear A Big Moustache!” Their projects work both as investigations into as well as projections of cultural fantasies onto Athens, a modern city full of contemporary complexity as well as ancient myths and history.

Los Super Elegantes will perform and sing their songs on the roof garden of the Athens Imperial Hotel with the Parthenon as their backdrop. The exhibition will also feature the video clip of their latest single, “Nothing Really Matters” which they will have produced in Athens. The video clip will bring together a synopsis of Greek history as interpreted through films, music and the media with Onassis era clothing, ancient ruins, an infamous Acropolis nightclub as well as many a toga clad backup dancer.

Meanwhile, Pablo Leon de la Barra, inspired by the Greek War of Independence Hero, Karaiskakis (on whose namesake square the exhibition is taking place) and his eminent moustache, will produce a monument in his honor. Through research into the social and urban fabric of the surrounding area of the square Leon de la Barra will investigate the construction of myth, identity and masculinity in contemporary Greece through the aesthetic politics of the moustache.

The exhibition that will follow the performances will take place in the artists’ bedrooms in the hotel and will last for a month. The video clip of “Nothing Really Matters” will be exhibited alongside props from the making of the videoclip as well as a temple-installation in homage to great Greek male and female moustaches.

Milena Muzquiz (Tijuana, 1974) and Martiniano Lopez-Crozet (Argentina, 1968) formed Los Super Elegantes in San Francisco in 1995; they live and work in Los Angeles. Their first musical album Channelizing Paradise was released in 2002. Los Super Elegantes were featured in the 2004 Whitney Biennial, in the same year they created the highly successful Slow Dance Club as part of the Frieze Art Fair 2004 Art Project Commissions. Los Super Elegantes work has been reviewed in numerous publications including ArtForum, Index, Purple, Interview and many others.

Pablo Leon de la Barra is both an artist and a curator from Mexico (1972). He is also editor of Pablo Internacional Magazine, curator of White Cubicle Toilet Gallery and co-director of Blow de la Barra gallery in London where he lives. He has curated exhibitions such as To Be Political it Has to Look Nice, 2003 at Apexart in New York and exhibited amongst other places at Localismos, 2004 Mexico City; Going Public ’05 Communities and Territories, 2005, Larissa Contemporary Art Center; Tropical Abstraction, 2005, Stedelijk Museum; BMW- 9th Baltic Triennial, 2005, CAC-Lithuania and ICA-London and Globos Sonda/Trial Balloons, 2006, MUSAC, Spain.

Sponsored by Attica Bank and Classical HotelsWith the support of the US Embassy in AthensFor further information please contact-Maria-Thalia Carras or Sophia Tournikiotislocus@locusathens.com0030 6944 719 209www.locusathens.com

Lucha LeonesaDemonstration of Leones WrestlingMUSAC, LeónMay 2006Leones Wrestling is an original sport of the province of León, Spain. It is foughtby two wrestlers, in similar form to the Canaries wrestling or the Japanese. Thewrestling takes place within a circle of about 15 meters of diameter. The fightersmust dress with short trousers and a t-shirt, they cannot use footwear.Characteristically, they wear a leather belt of about 3 cm wide; this belt is placedin the waist, over the hip, so that it can easily be taken hold by the adversary. Theobjective is, by means of certain techniques denominated mañas, to make theopponent touch the ground with any part of their back, with which the winnerobtains two points. If it touches the ground with the stomach or the arms, a point isobtained. The first to obtain 4 points wins.Lucha Leonesa is one of the oldest native sports that still persists in Spain. Itsorigin is thought to be pre-Roman. It conserves a certain rural and primitiveflavour, which reminds of its origin. In the XIV century Leones Wrestling wasused in the Leones Mountains to solve border conflicts due to cattle grazing.There is no cause that by itself can explain the conservation of the tradition ofLeones Wrestling. This might be due to topography and deficient communicationroutes that prevented the relation of the area with the exterior; this social andcultural isolation allowed that the ancestral customs and traditions remained virginduring a long time. This united to the particular Leones way of life and the defenseof its roots and customs. The Leones character has always stayed very resistant toexternal influences.

EXHIBITIONS, PROJECTS AND TEXTS BY PLB

ABOUT ME

"At the end of the fifteenth of his 'Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Mankind' Schiller states a paradox and makes a promise. He declares that ‘Man is only completely human when he plays’, and assures us that this paradox is capable ‘of bearing the whole edifice of the art of the beautiful and of the still more difficult art of living’. We could reformulate this thought as follows: there exists a specific sensory experience—the aesthetic—that holds the promise of both a new world of Art and a new life for individuals and the community. There are different ways of coming to terms with this statement and this promise. You can say that they virtually define the ‘aesthetic illusion’ as a device which merely serves to mask the reality that aesthetic judgement is structured by class domination. In my view that is not the most productive approach..." from
Jacques Rancier, 'The Aesthetic Revolution and its Outcomes', New Left Review 14, April-March 2002

SHORT BIO

Pablo León de la Barra is an exhibition maker, independent curator and researcher. He was born in Mexico City in 1972. León de la Barra has a PhD in History and Theories from the Architectural Association, London. He has curated among other exhibitions ‘To Be Political it Has to Look Nice’ (2003) at apexart and Art in General in New York; ‘PR04 Biennale’ (2004, co-curator) in Puerto Rico; ‘George and Dragon at ICA’ (2005) at the ICA-London; ‘Glory Hole’ (2006) at the Architecture Foundation-London; ‘Sueño de Casa Propia’(2007-2008, in collaboration with Maria Ines Rodriguez) at Centre de Art Contemporaine-Geneve, Casa Encendida-Madrid, Casa del Lago-Mexico City, and Cordoba, Spain; ‘This Is Not America’ at Beta Local in San Juan, Puerto Rico (2009); ‘Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, Yucatan and Elsewhere’, at the CCE in Guatemala (2010); ‘To Know Him Is To Love Him’, Cerith Wyn Evans at Casa Barragan, Mexico City (2010); ‘Incidents of Mirror Travel in Yucatan and Elsewhere’, at Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2011); 'Bananas is my Business: the Southamerican Way' at Museu Carmen Miranda, Rio de Janeiro (co-curated with Julieta Gonzalez, 2011); 'MicroclimaS' at Kunsthalle Zurich (2012); 'Esquemas para una Oda Tropical', Rio de Janeiro, 2012; 'Marta 'Che' Traba' at Museo La Ene, Buenos Aires (2012); Novo Museo Tropical at Teoretica, San Jose, Costa Rica (2012); Museu Labirinto / Museum of Unlimited Growth, ArtRio, Rio de Janeiro (2012); The Camino Real Arcades, Lima, Peru (2012). PLB has acted as advisor and/or art curator for the following art fairs: Pinta/London (2010-12), Maco/Mexico (2009-1012), Circa/Puerto Rico (2010), La Otra/Bogota (2009), ArteBA/ Buenos Aires (2012), ArtRio/Rio de Janeiro (2011-2013). León de la Barra has written amongst other publications for: Frog/Paris, PinUp/New York, Purple/Paris, Spike/Austria, Tar/Italy, Wallpaper/London, Celeste/Mexico, Tomo/Mexico, Rufino/Mexico, Ramona/Buenos Aires, Metropolis M/Amsterdam, Numero Cero/Puerto Rico. PLB has also written texts for many artists and exhibition catalogues, lectured internationally and participated in many international symposiums where relevant topics to arts, culture and society have been discussed. PLB was co-director of ‘24-7’ an artists-curatorial collective in London from 2002-2005 and artistic director of ‘Blow de la Barra’ in London from 2005-2008. From 2005 to 2012 he was curator of the White Cubicle Gallery in London, a community art space which he also founded. He is also founder of the Novo Museo Tropical, a museum yet to physically exist somewhere in the tropics and curated the First Bienal Tropical in San Juan Puerto Rico (2011). He is also the publisher of Pablo Internacional Editions and editor of his own blog the Centre for the Aesthetic Revolution. He lives and works between London, Mexico City, Los Angeles, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, San Juan, Bogota, Lima, Athens, Beirut...